Parable of the Sower is a complex novel that engages is the post-apocalyptic world of conversation about race and religion through realistic character development and fast-paced action. The novel winds itself through the wastelands of urban warfare, the degradation of the earth at the hands of the worst American vices; violence, addiction, racial tension, cultish religions conviction, where the test of hope against woe is waged with fortress walls and armed demand. Inside the story of Lauren Oya Olamina, Butler narrates the quixotic preacher of Earthseed with the curse of hyperempathy, damning her to the emotions of those around her. Yet, inside these tales of drug wars, migration, and cruel hunger, Butler tells a modern day story of honesty, grace, and warmth that parallels the Markan Parable written two thousand years earlier. The Markan gospel includes a much-overlooked text subject to much clergical and academic debate. The original Parable of the Sower has fallen under hermeneutical ecplise, words conformed to the community in needs of its tale. The...

In their environments, Lauren and Jesus stand alone feeling the pain of the world against its vicious angst; in a world gone bad, how do those who feel completely rationalize and survive the unspeakable intolerables at their feet? Lauren is forced to face the anarchy from behind the tired walls of her urban enclave, which crumbles to the tyranny of the Pyro addicts' reckless ventures. As she stands to leave her falling home, her friends and family are raped, mutilated, and murdered; cursed with her genetic crown of…